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July 8, 2025 - Epoch Times
06:15
How to break the chains of child abandonment and abuse: Adam Coleman
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One of the most controversial things that you can talk about as a parent is discipline because the question becomes, do you hit your child or do you not hit your child?
And discipline or well yeah, discipline stand comes from discipleship, right?
It means to teach.
And by hitting your child, what are you teaching your child?
You know, you'll hear some people say, it's to get a reaction out of them.
Well, you can get a reaction out of a child multiple ways without putting your hands on them.
And for me, that's not an expression of love.
In no circumstance will we say, well, it's okay that you hate your wife because you love her.
I was like, no, you don't hit people that you love.
Nevertheless, a child who's defenseless, who's a third of your size, who has no recourse for anything that you do.
So for me, I'm about teaching my son.
Doesn't mean I haven't yelled at my son or anything like that, but it means that my focus was always about teaching him.
I think we get too carried away with punishment, right?
You can punish him.
You're grounded.
Or frankly, lack of it, if I may, right?
I think like when I hear you talking, I don't think the problem is that people are giving out too much punishment.
Like at least, you know, from everything I've read and seen that's over this, the lack of boundaries, the lack of discipline, right?
That seems to be more of the incredible permissiveness.
If I may, but please continue.
Yeah.
No, you're absolutely right.
It's both, right?
At the end of the day, we're talking about an imbalance.
For the people who are disciplining, I sometimes see that they're going above and beyond what they should be doing.
But then there's also an imbalance where they're not doing anything.
And for the people who aren't doing anything, they want to be their child's friend.
But being your child's friend puts you at an equal level, right?
I can't tell you what to do.
I have no authority over you if you're my friend.
But if I'm your parent, I have an authority over you, which means I have to tell you what to do.
But if you reduce that authority and always see yourself as your child's friend, well, they won't listen to you.
You don't punish them.
You give them everything that they want, right?
You're trying to be a good friend.
You need to be a good parent.
And there's a difference between not being your child's friend and not being friendly.
Of course you'd be friendly with your child.
I respect my son.
He respects me.
There's a certain level of authority that I have over you and a certain level of respect that I want exemplified for me.
Just in the same way, I don't overshare with my son.
He doesn't engage, well, when he was a child, he didn't engage in adult conversations, right?
And I do think for the people who are avoiding discipline, being a parent is a far greater status than being a friend.
And they've yet to realize that.
We have friends who are here for five years and disappeared, you never talk to again.
But when you're a parent, that's for life.
And so there is something that is honorable and beautiful about being a parent.
There is something fleeting about being a friend.
What do you think is the single most important thing you could do when you know you have a fraught relationship with your child?
Do you mean in a circumstance where your child is still a child or they're an adult now?
When they're still a child.
With accountability and acknowledging that you are hurting your child, that's the pathway towards healing.
So it doesn't necessarily mean that you acknowledge it.
I am sorry.
I know I hurt you.
They still may put the wall up and ignore you.
But here's the thing.
When they do that, it's because they want you to hurt like they're hurting.
And they want you to fight to get back into a relationship because all they've seen is that you've given up.
And so if they put that wall up and you're like, well, I tried and you walk away, you validate that you've abandoned them, right?
See, he wasn't serious.
He's not even trying.
So I do think that reunification is really important, which is why I talk about forgiveness in the book.
If you're a child who's been abandoned, speaking of myself, even though my father's not alive, when he was alive, I forgave him, right?
Always left that door open if he did want to call and say, you know what?
I was wrong.
I was a young man, or he wasn't really a young man.
But, you know, in the past, I made mistakes.
I've come to realize these things, and I am sorry.
And I just want to get to know my son because I don't know who you are.
I would have allowed for that to happen.
I think a lot of kids would allow that to happen.
But the mistake of parents, and I've talked to fathers in this situation, especially, who are trying to get back into children's lives.
The child has a version of what happened.
He has a version of what happened.
And so when the child says, well, you did X, Y, and Z, he's like, no, no, no, you don't understand because your mother did.
It becomes them missing the point.
And it sounds like the only reason you're talking is so you can validate what you did and try to legislate all these different components of the situation that maybe the child wasn't aware of rather than they just want you to acknowledge that you didn't do the best thing and that they're hurting.
That's it.
And so sometimes the parents who are trying to get back in their kids' lives are debating the issue.
Or if it's a father, he's like, you don't understand your mother was doing X, Y, and Z. Well, guess what?
That child loves that mother.
And trying to build a case against someone that they love, it's going to be a losing battle.
Especially you're coming from the weak position of not being in their life.
So that stuff becomes the noise when it comes to reunification.
Whatever they say that you did, it doesn't matter what you did.
That's how they feel.
That's what they believe.
And maybe one day they'll be open enough to actually hear your perspective.
And then they will make a decision.
You know what?
Maybe I am misremembering that.
But battling them on details is a losing battle.
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